


Incidental Dialogue

by babel



Category: OFF (Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-28
Updated: 2013-04-28
Packaged: 2017-12-09 19:36:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/777234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babel/pseuds/babel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm going to tell you a story now. You probably won't like how it ends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Incidental Dialogue

I'm going to tell you a story now. You probably won't like how it ends. 

(The beginning and middle aren't that great either.)

* * *

He hasn't got a proper name, the bloke I take to bed sometimes. To be honest, he could be any of the other hundred guys who looks exactly like him, and I probably wouldn't know the difference. I just know he answers to "hey, you" and he'll do just about anything for a little sugar. 

I should specify; he'd do anything for the literal type of sugar, whereas I'd do just about anything for the other kind. But not Sugar. She's another issue altogether, and I'm already getting sidetracked here. Let's see.

Hey You and I have a pretty solid arrangement. I've given him the prestigious job of guarding my treasure room, wherein, on occasion, I will put him up against a wall and fuck him while he murmurs and sometimes drools a little. I give him a little plastic bag of sugar afterward, and sometimes I suck him off while he sits on one of the treasure chests and eats it.

He asks one day out of nowhere, "Boss? Why do you have all these treasures?" The corners of his mouth are caked with sugar and his eyes are dilated, and I have to take his dick out of my mouth to answer. 

"They're for someone special."

"Oh." He sticks his finger into the sugar and sucks on his finger for a moment. "Who?"

"The same one we're all waiting for." He doesn't understand. "Don't you sense it? Even _you_ must know. We're all waiting for someone to come along and click 'New Game.' We're all hoping it'll be different this time around."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Boss."

"I know," I say with a sigh. Then, I add, "I think I'm going to build a roller coaster."

"What's that?" he asks, but I don't answer him this time. He watches me pull his dick back into my mouth, and he whimpers.

* * *

"Why a bat?"

The shadow of his cap covers his eyes like a blindfold as he sorts through my wares, trying to make the perfect decisions.

"Why a bat, he asks again, as if he doesn't know."

Those things that follow him around hover behind him, humming quietly. "What are you talking about, Zacharie?"

"It's just something to say." I turn a credit in my hand. "Haven't you noticed that people say these random things when you come up to them, and if you come around again, they say the same thing? Why a bat, he asks, not expecting an answer."

"I'll have these," he says, taking three tickets and leaving the credits on the table.

* * *

Nota Bene: That second part came a long time after the first part, and this next part is going to be somewhere in between, and the part after that, I'm not even sure yet. I've never been good at linear storytelling.

* * *

I'm sitting at a blue table in a blue chair sharing a blue bottle of red meat with a blue mannequin, although truth be told the mannequin isn't doing the majority of the drinking. It just has a dribble of red running down from where its mouth would be if it had one.

There's meowing coming from somewhere, but it doesn't sound like Pablo.

"Something's in the plastic, you know." The mannequin says nothing. "Not the plastic you're made out of, of course. The liquid stuff. There's something in it." The mannequin says nothing. "That's what the fences are for. If you get too close" The mannequin says nothing. "it'd jump up and" The mannequin says nothing. "eat you."

I lift my glass to the mannequin. "I like plastic," I say, and I lift my plastic mask to take a sip.

* * *

I find all the chests in my treasure room empty, and I state, "this is symbolic of something," but no one hears me, because I've sent them all away.

* * *

He hasn't got a name. Sometimes I try to think one up for him. I tried calling him Bob, Joshua, Marcus, Julius, Seth, Anthony, Robert, but then I realized Robert was the same as Bob, and I gave up on it.

He falls asleep in the corner of the treasure room cradling the bag of sugar and muttering to himself in his sleep about monsters. I say to him when he wakes up, "What if I'm a monster?" and his eyes get big and round and I think he's going to cry, so I leave.

* * *

I'm sitting on the metal counter, kicking the old metal bat he's just sold back to me while he decides whether it would be more beneficial to buy the tunic or the colour. Each kick sends a jolt of muted pain through my foot. I broke it a few weeks ago slamming it against a wall again and again and

"Don't you have anything better?"

I kick the bat a little harder. "In your budget? No."

He mutters something that he doesn't think I can hear.

"What's despicable?" I ask. He pretends he doesn't hear me, so I hop off the counter and step closer to him. "What's despicable, he asked the infuriatingly terse customer again."

"You." He adjusts his cap further over his eyes. "I work for the greater good. You only care about your credits."

I chuckle, and the sound makes his eye twitch. "Do I? Have you ever asked yourself why I even need those credits?"

He pauses, then says, "No."

"If I ever gave you everything you need, what would you do with me?"

He doesn't answer.

"What would you do to me with that bat I sold you?"

He doesn't answer.

"We all have our roles here, and me? I'm the neutral arms merchant who doesn't care if you're defending my home or destroying it." I hold my hand out. "Credits, please."

He takes the tunic and pays me.

* * *

There is blood in the sugar.

I am gathering the sugar up into little plastic bags out of habit more than anything--there's no one left to give it to--but I am gathering up the sugar into little plastic bags but there are clumps where the blood has made the sugar stick together like grotesque snowballs but I am gathering the sugar up into little plastic bags and out of the corner of my eye I can see her hair matted with the same blood and I put line the bags up along the wall.

* * *

I didn't sell him his first bat.

I remind myself again and again.

I didn't sell him his first bat. I didn't sell him his first bat. I didn't sell

* * *

"Maybe there could be an alternate ending," I say one day, while Pablo and I are waiting in a yellow room with the yellow light filtering in through the open door. I can hear Sugar scratching around under the floor like a mouse.

Pablo flicks his tail back and forth. "Would it make any difference? I will still give him clues. You will still give him supplies. What ending could change any of it, once it's already occurred?"

"If you wouldn't _forget_ every time..."

"If you wouldn't fall into your role every time..."

I huff a sigh, because I know he's right. That's _his_ role, after all. The wise but trusting mentor. I wonder if he trusts me. "There could still be another ending. A secret item. A... I'm so sick of him _winning_."

"Maybe," Pablo says, resting his head on his paws. "Maybe there already is one."

* * *

One day, Hey You shows me the statue he's made out of bits of pink plastic. "I left the treasure room one day, Boss," he explains, "and I wanted to make something. I wanted to... to be something... to make something more than... Than me. Does that make sense?"

I nod, and I tell him it's a good likeness of me, that he's done a good job, and I send him away to smoke mines where I will never see him again, and I never say a word to his replacement at the treasure room door.

* * *

That's it. That's the story. You can't say I didn't warn you.

Start at the beginning again if you want. Maybe it'll go differently this time. Maybe it will be something more than it is.

But I doubt it.


End file.
